can i create a little #nostr circle that’s filled with individuals interested in talking about the ideas of #libertarianism #natural-rights #anarcho-capitalism etc ?

maybe reply to this thread? i’d create a list with everyone if that was a thing in damus / nostr

best way to buy non-kyc bitcoin in australia? hodl hodl? robosats? bisq? something else?

I’m starting to understand this I think…

So, Rousseau was of the belief that humans left to their own devices, in the state of nature, were naturally good, and that the state / culture is the driving force of corruption of the individual. His solution being the ominous “collective will of the people”.

Hobbes was of the opposite opinion, he thought that human being left to their own devices reap havoc and violence; and that the state / culture is the saving grace for us all. His solution essentially being that the state deserves full and near absolute control, otherwise we’ll fall into our savage ways.

Locke on the other hand believed that humans have the capacity for both good and evil, and we can’t assume a tendency for everyone towards any of those particular ends. He believed that the function of government is to uphold the natural rights of the citizens (life, liberty and property). He also fully supported the idea of citizens right to revolution against the government (presumably if they stopped supporting the natural rights of citizens, and instead behaved in another manner).

However, what they all have in common is a “belief” of the necessity (or maybe the presumption) of a social contract.

I’m definitely of the opinion that Locke is a clear winner in the battle of thought between these three (Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau), but I think he’s thinking from a time where governments might have been much easier to topple and switch up? So, his presumption is that we enter into the social contract on natural right grounds, and if this is violated, it’s maybe not so difficult a task to switch things up, rearrange the board so to speak.

However, maybe this is where Spooner’s thinking comes in? Where he rejects the notion that such a thing as the “social contract” is even valid; partly because for a valid contract you need consent (and some term limit), and compliance does not equal consent in this case.

This seems to (in my mind) be where Rothbard seems to pick up the conversation. He definitely follows on from Locke, and if I’m understanding Spooner correctly he’s essentially pulling a rejection of citizens providing the state consent for governance from him.

I’m starting to understand this I think…

So, Rousseau was of the belief that humans left to their own devices, in the state of nature, were naturally good, and that the state / culture is the driving force of corruption of the individual. His solution being the ominous “collective will of the people”.

Hobbes was of the opposite opinion, he thought that human being left to their own devices reap havoc and violence; and that the state / culture is the saving grace for us all. His solution essentially being that the state deserves full and near absolute control, otherwise we’ll fall into our savage ways.

Locke on the other hand believed that humans have the capacity for both good and evil, and we can’t assume a tendency for everyone towards any of those particular ends. He believed that the function of government is to uphold the natural rights of the citizens (life, liberty and property). He also fully supported the idea of citizens right to revolution against the government (presumably if they stopped supporting the natural rights of citizens, and instead behaved in another manner).

However, what they all have in common is a “belief” of the necessity (or maybe the presumption) of a social contract.

I’m definitely of the opinion that Locke is a clear winner in the battle of thought between these three (Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau), but I think he’s thinking from a time where governments might have been much easier to topple and switch up? So, his presumption is that we enter into the social contract on natural right grounds, and if this is violated, it’s maybe not so difficult a task to switch things up, rearrange the board so to speak.

However, maybe this is where Spooner’s thinking comes in? Where he rejects the notion that such a thing as the “social contract” is even valid; partly because for a valid contract you need consent (and some term limit), and compliance does not equal consent in this case.

This seems to (in my mind) be where Rothbard seems to pick up the conversation. He definitely follows on from Locke, and if I’m understanding Spooner correctly he’s essentially pulling a rejection of citizens providing the state consent for governance from him.

I’m starting to understand this I think…

So, Rousseau was of the belief that humans left to their own devices, in the state of nature, were naturally good, and that the state / culture is the driving force of corruption of the individual. His solution being the ominous “collective will of the people”.

Hobbes was of the opposite opinion, he thought that human being left to their own devices reap havoc and violence; and that the state / culture is the saving grace for us all. His solution essentially being that the state deserves full and near absolute control, otherwise we’ll fall into our savage ways.

Locke on the other hand believed that humans have the capacity for both good and evil, and we can’t assume a tendency for everyone towards any of those particular ends. He believed that the function of government is to uphold the natural rights of the citizens (life, liberty and property). He also fully supported the idea of citizens right to revolution against the government (presumably if they stopped supporting the natural rights of citizens, and instead behaved in another manner).

However, what they all have in common is a “belief” of the necessity (or maybe the presumption) of a social contract.

I’m definitely of the opinion that Locke is a clear winner in the battle of thought between these three (Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau), but I think he’s thinking from a time where governments might have been much easier to topple and switch up? So, his presumption is that we enter into the social contract on natural right grounds, and if this is violated, it’s maybe not so difficult a task to switch things up, rearrange the board so to speak.

However, maybe this is where Spooner’s thinking comes in? Where he rejects the notion that such a thing as the “social contract” is even valid; partly because for a valid contract you need consent (and some term limit), and compliance does not equal consent in this case.

This seems to (in my mind) be where Rothbard seems to pick up the conversation. He definitely follows on from Locke, and if I’m understanding Spooner correctly he’s essentially pulling a rejection of citizens providing the state consent for governance from him.

got a coinjoin / mixing question:

if i mix in a 0.01 pool, i’ll get a bunch of 0.01 utxo’s out the other end of the mix(es)

then, any change from the mixing process is toxic, i understand that much

but, if (with my mixed coinage) i go to purchase something that’s 0.005 BTC, then i’d get 0.005 BTC change that would theoretically now be “toxic” (i.e. the vendor would know it’s my change after purchase has been made)

so, my question is, do you always have to re-mix any change from purchases made with already mixed utxo’s?

On Rousseau, I’ve heard that the modern interpretation is that he sort of aimlessly said human’s are born good and everything else around the human sort of “corrupts” them.

I’ve only really heard about Rousseau through listening to Jordan Peterson though, and Peterson is a staunch critic of him I believe, throws him in the post-modern, everything in society is based around power type camp.

Reading a bit about Hume, he seems a bit more like a traditional libertarian, Scottish enlightenment type, and it looks like Hume got a sour taste for Rousseau after some time.

What’s your understanding of that whole ordeal?

if damus had solid group chat support, and it was pretty simple for me to run my own private relay, and group chat participants could very simply choose to only send their group chat messages through only that private relay

then, i could maybe convince my friends to move our group chat onto nostr, and it would be completely sovereign

only blocker would be that everyone else my friends message (other group chats etc) are all on fb messenger so they lose the convenience of having all their chats in one place

hmmm

That’s the part I loved about Rothbard’s formulation, is that he essentially defined and separated personal moral and social ethic for me.

From my understanding the social ethic is derived from natural rights and law, but the personal moral is driven by one’s personal moral compass (what they believe to be good / moral action).

Rothbard mentioned utilitarian a lot, but I feel like the word carried a slightly different meaning back when he was writing too. From what I understand utilitarianism is trying to maximise the “social good” for the most people for the most time. This fell short in my mind because it’s an attempt of someone to coercively push their own personal moral into the social ethic. The social ethic being derived by sound, logical, natural law / rights (to me) ensured that rules for all remained consistent, easy to understand, and tended away from being arbitrary.

I could have a very poor understanding of utilitarianism and be selling it short here though (my ignorance is unending haha).

The balance between personal moral and societal ethic is an interesting question to ponder though.

In my mind the two should be considered sort of like a Church and State relationship; where we acknowledge that they’re both useful frameworks, but they deserve to be kept seperate.

Too often it seems we lose sight of the objective foundation that sits behind our societal ethic (i.e. natural law / rights), and short term whim leads us into adopting some widely agreed personal morals into the fabric of the societal ethic. The prime issue being, if you do it once, you can be sure it’ll happen again and again.

It then becomes a heated debate of what personal morals should next be written into the wider public law / ethic, which makes us lose sight of our own personal accountability to act morally / properly / with the good (because we can just legislate all the bad personal moral behaviour away, right?)

We must all abide by the natural right derived societal ethic, and it’s up to us to ensure that this doesn’t get corrupt, co-opted or lost entirely.

However, provided the above holds true, our personal moral compass is up to each individual to define, hone, and live with.

The question of balance is a tough one because the personal moral is entirely up to the individual to define; it is almost their journey of character building when defining that compass.

The societal ethic I think depends on the current interpretation and understanding of the natural law / rights interpretation(s). I’m guessing, like everything, there’s no entire set of agreement there, so to some “life, liberty and property” might not be their understanding of the modern derivation of natural rights. There will have to be a balance within that conversation, an investigation of past writings, a sound debate, etc.

Unless these natural rights / laws are unequivocally defined, set, objective and unchanging / unchallenged? I think that’s the core thing I’m trying to discover with my question(s) - for now.

That’s the part I loved about Rothbard’s formulation, is that he essentially defined and separated personal moral and social ethic for me.

From my understanding the social ethic is derived from natural rights and law, but the personal moral is driven by one’s personal moral compass (what they believe to be good / moral action).

Rothbard mentioned utilitarian a lot, but I feel like the word carried a slightly different meaning back when he was writing too. From what I understand utilitarianism is trying to maximise the “social good” for the most people for the most time. This fell short in my mind because it’s an attempt of someone to coercively push their own personal moral into the social ethic. The social ethic being derived by sound, logical, natural law / rights (to me) ensured that rules for all remained consistent, easy to understand, and tended away from being arbitrary.

I could have a very poor understanding of utilitarianism and be selling it short here though (my ignorance is unending haha).

The balance between personal moral and societal ethic is an interesting question to ponder though.

In my mind the two should be considered sort of like a Church and State relationship; where we acknowledge that they’re both useful frameworks, but they deserve to be kept seperate.

Too often it seems we lose sight of the objective foundation that sits behind our societal ethic (i.e. natural law / rights), and short term whim leads us into adopting some widely agreed personal morals into the fabric of the societal ethic. The prime issue being, if you do it once, you can be sure it’ll happen again and again.

It then becomes a heated debate of what personal morals should next be written into the wider public law / ethic, which makes us lose sight of our own personal accountability to act morally / properly / with the good (because we can just legislate all the bad personal moral behaviour away, right?)

We must all abide by the natural right derived societal ethic, and it’s up to us to ensure that this doesn’t get corrupt, co-opted or lost entirely.

However, provided the above holds true, our personal moral compass is up to each individual to define, hone, and live with.

The question of balance is a tough one because the personal moral is entirely up to the individual to define; it is almost their journey of character building when defining that compass.

The societal ethic I think depends on the current interpretation and understanding of the natural law / rights interpretation(s). I’m guessing, like everything, there’s no entire set of agreement there, so to some “life, liberty and property” might not be their understanding of the modern derivation of natural rights. There will have to be a balance within that conversation, an investigation of past writings, a sound debate, etc.

Unless these natural rights / laws are unequivocally defined, set, objective and unchanging / unchallenged? I think that’s the core thing I’m trying to discover with my question(s) - for now.

To me, the word “libertarian” is very misunderstood in modern times.

However, I don’t claim to know the full history of the word, or what it’s “proper meaning” should be.

I just know that if a common individual even knows what the word libertarian means, it usually gets thrown in a basket with “conservative”, “right leaning”, “an ideology for dirty capitalists” (or something along those lines.

If someone has a surface level understanding of libertarianism they might instead throw it in a basket with “everything goes”, “no rules”, “do whatever you want” (or something along those lines).

After reading Rothbard, my understanding is that the libertarian is the person who stands for individual freedom and liberty above all else, and at every avenue of choice, chooses liberty.

Natural rights must always still be upheld, so the notion that there are no rules at all is nonsense. There are rules, they just apply equally to everyone as they should, they are logically sound / rigorous, and in my opinion easier to understand for everyone.

The claim that libertarianism falls into “the right” is null because it doesn’t stand for any political ideology. It instead consistently selects freedom at every avenue; societal freedom and economic freedom alike.

That’s probably the best I can do for now - hopefully I am closer to Mill’s “On Liberty” than I am further away.

thanks for the suggestions! when i was googling around for ideas aquinas and locke continued to come up, so that makes sense that they’re both integral

i’ll post some more context around what i’m trying to better understand below, and maybe you can tailor which books i should prioritise first? …

i’ve only just finished reading “The Ethics of Liberty” and the opening chapter were something like ‘An Introduction to Natural Law’ which i found quite hard to follow

after finishing the book i came out with the opinion that a lot of the libertarian view is based upon the natural rights of life, liberty and property

but, (this was prior to finishing the book) when discussing natural rights / law with a friend he asked the very obvious and legitimate question of “what is a natural right? and what is natural law?” and i sort of stumbled on my words

considering libertarianism seems downstream of natural law, and that seems downstream of these natural rights (life, liberty and property); it only makes sense that i understand WHY these are the particular natural rights (and not any other rights), and HOW we decided that these are the natural rights (i.e. WHAT constitutes something being a natural right)?

thanks for your suggestion! when i was googling around for ideas aquinas and locke continued to come up, so that makes sense

i’ve only just finished reading “The Ethics of Liberty” and the opening chapter were something like ‘An Introduction to Natural Law’ which i found quite hard to follow

after finishing the book i came out with the opinion that a lot of the libertarian view is based upon the natural rights of life, liberty and property

but, (this was prior to finishing the book) when discussing natural rights / law with a friend he asked the very obvious and legitimate question of “what is a natural right? and what is natural law?” and i sort of stumbled on my words

considering libertarianism seems downstream of natural law, and that seems downstream of these natural rights (life, liberty and property); it only makes sense that i understand WHY these are the particular natural rights (and not any other rights), and HOW we decided that these are the natural rights (i.e. WHAT constitutes something being a natural right)?

i’m looking for book suggestions surrounding natural law and natural rights?

these are fundamental building blocks that rothbard (and a lot of libertarian writers) stand upon when forming their arguments, and i would really like to understand them more deeply

any suggestions?

is op_return a concern to any of you?

4MB upper limit to blocks seems like a bit of a concern for my poor man’s raspberry pi node

i’ve got 2tb storage, but that would mean i’ll have to get additional storage a lot quicker than i anticipated

would be easier to swallow the pill of storing this extra data if i (as a user of bitcoin) was getting some useful functionality

but, if all this extra storage enables is bitcoin blockchain based nfts and useless shit, then it stings a little to know my node has to store all those extra bytes

thoughts?

explain drivechains; why are they useful, why are they horrendous? go.

someone want to share some good info on drivechains?

at first glance i tend to side with the “no” people because i don’t really understand how i’d benefit at all from a drivechain, and the extra complexity seems like a bad idea

what utility does a drivechain bring? and why does it have to join the base layer protocol? isn’t there already all this taro stuff happening on lightning anyway?

and, if someone’s shilling drivechains to me can they also talk about the mining centralisation and incentive structure? seems like a plausible argument that miners being incentivised to mine specific drivechains would be spending less effort within the actual base layer incentive structure?

not trying to start any arguments, just trying to genuinely understand and form a viewpoint

i didn’t care about being nip05 verified until now 😡 now i have to figure out what it’s all about

i guess worst case, if it becomes a massive blocker, damus-web could become safari friendly? not ideal, but an option nonetheless

fuck sakes

i think bitcoiners will need to start jailbreaking our phones soon, is that a thing still?